O ICS, UL, em parceria com o Instituto Confúcio da UL, organiza uma sessão extraordinária do Seminário de História de Estudos Pós Graduados do  ICS  em que será conferencista o Prof Li Bozhong da Tsinghua University, Beijing, China. A conferência do Prof Li Bozhong,  intitulada  From Poverty to Development: Chinese Economic Growth in a Historical Perspective, realizar-se-á no dia 31 de Maio de 2010, pelas 17 h, no Auditório Sedas Nunes. 

Resumo:

 1. "China is everywhere": China in the world today "Chimerica": China+USA = 1/3 of the world total GDP, with China's share being 12.5%. The 2009 global output growth was led by China (8.4%).

2. Poverty: China before 1978 - In 1952-78, China's annual economic growth was 4.4%, lower than the world's average. In 1978, China's per capita GDP was only 22% of the world's average, or 15% of that of the Soviet Union's, 5% of the United States's. In the term of GDP per capita, China ranked among the poorest countries in 1978.

3. Development: Chinese economic miracle since 1978 - China's economy has been growing at a rate of over 9% annually since 1978. If the thirty provinces of China were counted as individual economies, the twenty fastest-growing economies in the world would be Chinese (the World Bank). Using the PPP measurements, in 2009 the size of China's economy doubled Japan's, and was 60% of the United States's. The dramatic improvement of living standards: increase of income, improvement in life expectancy and nutrition, and college enrollments.

As Dwight Perkins summarized, "It took one hundred and fifty years for the industrial revolution to begin in England in the late eighteenth century and then sweep across the rest of Europe and North America (including the former Soviet bloc), raising the living standards in an area that today encompasses roughly about 23 percent of the world's total population. If China's efforts to become an industrialized nation succeed, however, then another 23 per cent of the world's total will live in the industrialized world within just four or five short decades." It is fair to say, therefore, it is the greatest economic miracle in human history.

4. "A roller coaster": China's economic growth in a historical perspective - China's present is a continuity of its past, or the persistence of the past. China has changed greatly in the last two decades. But China's history still clearly illuminates its present. The presence of the past can be seen in many areas.

China saw one of the most successful economic growths in pre-modern world by 1820. According to Angus Maddison, China's share in World GDP rose from 23.1% to 32.4% in 1700-1820, and China's rate of economic growth was faster than West Europe's.

During the centuries before the Opium War China was the leading actor in the world trade. The value of Chinese merchandise export was dwarfing that of any other countries. Andrew Gunder Frank concluded that in the early nineteenth century world, China did not only have the biggest economy, but also was placed at the center of the world economy.

Adam Smith, therefore, said: China was "long one of the richest, that is, one of fertile, best cultivated, most industrious, and most populous countries in the world".

In a sharp contrast, China's economic performance was very poor in the late 19th and most of the 20th century. China's share of the world's GDP fell to 5.0% in 1978. As a result, China saw a continuing decline of GDP per capita. The Chinese themselves described their country was "poor and blank," the Chinese people lived "in deep water and scorching fire," "have rags on one's back and little in one's belly."

But China has seen a great economic miracle since 1979 and the country has been transformed.

5. The future of China's economy - David Miliband, British Foreign Minister, said in 2009: "China is becoming an indispensable power in the 21st century in the way Madeleine Albright said the US was an indispensable power at the end of the last century .....It has become an indispensable power economically, and China will become an indispensable power across a wider range of issues."

But China is also facing great challenges economically, socially, politically, environmentally and internationally.

Li Bozhong is Professor of History at Tsinghua University, Beijing, China. He received his Ph.D. degree in 1985 and was one of the first few persons who had earned their Ph. D. degrees in History in PRC after 1949. He worked in different academic institutions, including the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, University of Michigan, UCLA, Caltech, MIT, Harvard University, The Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, The National Humanities Center, University of Cambridge, London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), L'Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, University of Tokyo, Keio University and Acamica Sinica. He is a member of the Executive Committee of International Economic History Association (IEHA) and an Honorable Fellow of Toyo Bunko (Japan). He was invited to give talks at different prestigious institutions, including College de France, Harvard University, Columbia University, UCLA, University of Michigan, University of Cambridge, University of Oxford, LSE, SOAS, University of Utrecht, the International Institute of Social History (Amsterdam), University of Vienna and the like.

Li has been working in Chinese history, focusing on economic history of the Yangzi Delta. But his study also covers Chinese social, demographic, environmental, technological, cultural and educational history. He has published since 1974 nine books and more than sixty articles in mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, USA, UK, Japan and South Korea. The books include Tangdai Jiangnan nongye de fazhan (Agricultural development in the Yangzi Delta during the Tang times) (Beijing, 1990 and 2010); Agricultural Development in Jiangnan, 1620-1850 (London & New York, 1998), Jiangnan de zaoqi gongyehua, 1550-1850 (Early industrialization in the Yangzi Delta, 1550-1850) (Beijing, 2000 and 2010), Fazhan yu Zhiyue: ming-qing jiangnan shengchanli jingjishi yanjiu (Development and its limitations: a study of productive forces in the Yangzi Delta during the Ming-Qing times) (Taipei, 2002), Lilun, fangfa yu fazhan qushi: zhongguo jingjishi yajiu xin tansuo (Theories, methods and trends of disciplinary development: a new approach to Chinese economic history (Beijing, 2002; Seoul, 2006), Duo shijiao kan Jiangnan jingjishi, 960-1850 (economic history of the Yangzi Delta in multiple perspectives, 960-1850) (Beijing, 2003) and Zhongguo de zaoqi jindai jingji-1820 niandai Huating-Louxian diqu GDP yanjiu (China's early modern economy: A Study of GDP of the Huating-Lou area, 1823-19) (Beijing), 2009).